Alteryx Raises $12M to 'Humanize' Big Data

Hot on the heels of its Alteryx Strategic Analytics Platform 8.5 release, the Big Data analytics company raises additional funds to make Big Data more accessible to "ordinary" users.

Alteryx is wasting little time in its efforts to "humanize" Big Data and some venture capitalists have taken notice. Taking a pause from its rapid-fire product release schedule, the Irvine, Calif.-based Big Data analytics specialist announced today that it had raised $12 from Toba Capital, a venture capital firm founded by the former CEO and founder of Quest Software, Vinny Smith.

Existing investor SAP Ventures also backed the funding round. To date, the company has raised $18 million.

In less than a year, the company has rolled out several updates (from version 7.1 to 8.5) to its Alteryx Strategic Analytics product, which makes Big Data analytics more accessible to frontline users and business analysts.

According to George Mathew, COO and president of Alteryx, his company's technology can help bridge the data scientist skills gap that is emerging as more enterprises leverage Big Data solutions to boost profitability. In Enterprise Apps Today's roundup of the top business intelligence trends for 2013, Mathew stated, "Due to the ubiquity of data, companies require a new set of specialists who can bridge the gap between IT and business by evolving their core thinking and approach to analytics decision-making. Alteryx calls them 'data artisans' and predicts an emerging generation of analysts that can provide answers to complex business questions in a short amount of time, using whatever data is required."

It's precisely those capabilities, particularly the way they resonate with the C-suite, which attracted the interest of Toba Capital. "CMOs, CFOs and other line-of-business organizations are realizing the immense business value in applying analytics to drive change and success in their organization. Alteryx alone addresses their needs without sacrificing power to usability," noted Toba Capital's Vinny Smith.

Alteryx's other accomplishments include a repeat appearance on Gartner's Business Intelligence and Analytics Magic Quadrant for 2013. The company has also inked partnerships with Tableau, Teradata, Cloudera and Hortonworks for near-turnkey Big Data infrastructure and visualization solutions.

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Echoing SAP's enthusiasm for all things Big Data and cloud, Jai Das, managing director of the business software giant's venture capital arm said, "Alteryx is one of the few analytics platform providers which has the right mix of cloud, Big Data and predictive analytics capabilities to be able to leverage the massive changes in the analytics market and grow rapidly to become one of the leading analytics companies."

The infusion of funding "will support accelerated growth through added sales, marketing and product investments along with international expansion," informed the company.

The news comes after the official launch of Alteryx Strategic Analytics 8.5. This latest version now includes social media tools, native creation of the Tableau Data Extract and a new designer interface -- all features aimed at putting the power of Big Data analytics in the hands of end users.

"With Alteryx Strategic Analytics 8.5, we are putting Big Data and customer analytics where they have the most value -- into the hands of the business analyst and the decision maker. We are providing a purpose-built product that enables data artisans to easily create the Big Data customer analytics that their sales, marketing and operations business decision makers need," stated Mathew during a sneak peek in March.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Enterprise Apps Today and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.